I Might Be Bad

Behold the evolution of versioning sophistication! From the barbaric simplicity of "1, 2, 3" (did we even have computers back then?), to the refined elegance of "1.0, 1.1, 1.2" that makes project managers feel professional, and finally ascending to godhood with "8086, 80286, 80386" – where you're not just versioning software, you're naming it after the silicon it runs on. Nothing says "I've been in this industry since punch cards" like referencing Intel processors from the 1980s. The true power move isn't semantic versioning – it's naming your releases after increasingly obsolete hardware.

If programming languages were weapons of choice, this is what we'd all be carrying. C++ is basically that Swiss Army knife with 500 functions you'll never use but can't throw away. JavaScript? Those kitchen scissors that somehow cut everything except what you actually need them for. Python gets the chainsaw because it chops through problems with brute simplicity (until you hit a threading issue). Meanwhile, Assembly programmers are performing surgery with precision scalpels because they're controlling every single byte like the control freaks they are. And then there's Visual Basic... literally just a spoon. Not even a sharp spoon. The kind of tool you give to the intern who can't be trusted with anything dangerous. The real joke? We're all still getting paid to use these ridiculous tools to build things that somehow run the entire world. Sleep tight!

Olympic shooters aiming for gold, C++ developers aiming for a version that actually compiles. Both require steady hands, nerves of steel, and the acceptance that something will inevitably explode. The difference? One gets a medal, the other gets to go home before midnight. The countdown from C++26 to C++11 is basically the developer equivalent of counting down the bullets you have left before resorting to throwing the gun at the bug.

The programming community's favorite pastime: creating yet another language nobody asked for! Imagine taking JavaScript's type coercion, PHP's inconsistent naming conventions, C++'s memory management, Python's GIL, and Java's verbosity—then mashing them into one horrific Frankenstein's monster of a language. The compiler would generate 200 warnings just to print "Hello World" and the documentation would be written exclusively in regex. The only thing more terrifying than using this language would be explaining it during a job interview.

The naval mine (C) with all its dangerous spikes has spawned a smaller, arguably more aggressive offspring (C++). Perfect representation of how C++ emerged from C with extra features that can blow up your code in exciting new ways! The parent is already dangerous enough with manual memory management and pointer arithmetic, but the child adds inheritance, templates, and operator overloading to create even more spectacular runtime explosions. Just like these underwater mines, both languages will sink your project if you touch the wrong part.

When you realize that both JavaScript and C++ can be represented as either a massive rhinoceros or a delicate butterfly depending on which parts you actually use. The "Good Parts" books are basically saying "Here's how to avoid getting impaled by the language you're forced to use at work." Honestly, the fact that both languages need books specifically to identify their non-terrible features is the most savage burn in computer science history.